Adam Klein & The Wild Fires – Sky Blue DeVille

Adam Klein has been kicking it around the Athens GA music scene for years. He’s released several solo records, including one filled with Malian music (that’s another story) but Sky Blue DeVille is his first with a band, The Wild Fires, and it’s easily his best yet.

The songs on Sky Blue DeVille are dusty and wind-blown numbers with more than their fair share of longing and restlessness. One of the themes Klein includes in all of his records is a nostalgia of times gone by, either 10 years or a hundred, both in the lyrics and in the instrumentation. Musically there are nods in the Son Volt direction but Klein’s lyrics are much more concrete than the majority of Farrar’s lyrics. More like short stories than songs.

These songs are less rocking then a lot of the stuff we usually write about but they’re still high-quality and it’s criminal that Sky Blue DeVille isn’t a big hit with the No Depression website crowd. What they lack in rock Adam Klein & The Wild Fires more than make up with smoothness and execution. It’s a record you should be listening to.